XXVI

Keep to yourself any intelligence that may prove unpleasant,
till some person else has disclosed it:—­Bring,
O nightingale! the glad tidings of the spring, and
leave to the owl to be the harbinger of evil.

* * * *
*

XXVIII

Whoever is counselling a self-sufficient man stands
himself in need of a counsellor.

XXIX

Swallow not the wheedling of a rival, nor pay for
the sycophancy of a parasite; for that has laid the
snare of treachery, and this whetted the palate of
gluttony. The fool is puffed up with his own praise,
like a dead body, which on being stretched upon a
bier shows a momentary corpulency:—­Take
heed and listen not to the sycophant’s blandishments,
who expects in return some small compensation; for
shouldst thou any day disappoint his object he would
in like style sum up two hundred of thy defects.

XXX

Till some person may show its defects, the speech
of the orator will fail of correctness:—­Be
not vain of the eloquence of thy discourse because
it has the fool’s good opinion, and thine own
approbation.

XXXI

Every person thinks his own intellect perfect, and
his own child handsome:—­A Mussulman and
a Jew were warm in argument to such a degree that
I smiled at their subject. The Mussulman said
in wrath: “If this deed of conveyance be
not authentic may I, O God, die a Jew!” The Jew
replied: “On the Pentateuch I swear, if
what I say be false, I am a Mussulman like you!”
Were intellect to be annihilated from the face of
the earth, nobody could be brought to say: “I
am ignorant.”

XXXII

Ten people will partake of the same joint of meat,
and two dogs will snarl over a whole carcase.
The greedy man is incontinent with a whole world set
before him; the temperate man is content with his crust
of bread:—­A loaf of brown bread may fill
an empty stomach, but the produce of the whole globe
cannot satisfy a greedy eye:—­My father,
when the sun of his life was going down, gave me this
sage advice, and it set for good, saying: “Lust
is a fire; refrain from indulging it, and do not involve
thyself in the flames of hell. Since thou hast
not the strength of burning in those flames (as a
punishment in the next world), pour in this world
the water of continence upon this fire—­namely,
lust.”

XXXIII

Whoever does not do good, when he has the means of
doing it, will suffer hardship when he has not the
means:—­None is more unlucky than the misanthrope,
for on the day of adversity he has not a single friend.